Adding a Trailtech Vapor dashboard

I finally got tired of the stock dash - it's digital, but stupid. As there's no tach, I'd installed a Tinytach, like we use on the planes. It's not great, as it doesn't update very often. Anyway, I've been thinking about a Trailtech Vapor for ages, and I finally pulled the

trigger.

Here's the stock dashboard - meh.

The first thing to do was to take everything to pieces. The seat, tank and front plastic all needed to come off, then, obviously, the dashboard and speedo cable.

The temperature sensor is as simple as removing the pressure relief screw from the left radiator, and installing the new screw. Being very careful not to overtighten it, lest you strip the threads and have to buy a new radiator :o(

I tucked the wires into the loom that was already running up to the steering head.

The kit comes with a little plug for the speedo drive. Maybe one day I'll just get a blank machined up to replace the drive completely, but for now this'll do.

There's a (bloody) magnetic screw to replace one of the disc mounting bolts. As there was Loctite on it before, I put some on when I installed this.

The instructions say to mount the speedo pickup on the brake caliper, but that doesn't look like it'll work on the SM, so I drilled a hole in the fork guard and mounted it there. I've added a few more holes and ziptied the cable behind the guard before joining it to the brake hose. The instructions make is sound like a nightmare to get the speedo cable through the brake hose guide, but going from the bottom up, it was just a matter of pushing the connector through.

For the rev counter, I popped the spade off the coil and soldered the cable to it. The plastic cover has a lot of space in and around it, so it was easy and tidy to clip it under there again. I put a ring connector on the black ground cable and put it under the front mounting bolt for the coil - there's already something else using this as a ground, so that was easy.

The instructions say about using full time power for the computer, but one of the reasons I'm doing this is because I had to replace the battery due to the draw of the old dash. I've used the orange (power on with ignition) power line from the old dash setup. I also used the black and white ground here.

I bought a CNC milled dash mount - they come anodised, but if you ask, they'll send you a "raw" silver one. It's designed more for the "E" model, so the fat barred street ones will need a few 8mm washers under the top bar mount to make it work. With my Euro-spec appearance kit, it stands a little proud of the fairing, but I'm OK with that. The stock idiot light setup fits in (and is reportedly a lot more robust than the Trailtech setup, which I'd been considering at first). So, there you go. Oh, the temperature gauge won't work until you do a reset to make it look for the sensor. I know that's in the instructions, but I thought mine was broken at first :o)